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To sit upon, within, these dunes and see the wind dance and the sand pour had a strange fascination for me. I lost the sense of time and yet had it impressed upon me. The march of the sand was slow and yet fast; there was a strange sense of inevitability about it; each grain was alive, moving, bent on going south-east. There was silence and yet an infinite sense of motion; no life and yet a sense of living. The sand came up from the sea, marched solemnly and descended into the sea again. The two seas were two eternities; that narrow neck of sand was life. Distances grew great in the sun and the glare; it was a desert and a solitude, and yet close at hand were all the works of man. I often sat in the folds of the dunes and soaked in the sunshine as I was lost to the world.

And beyond it all was Confital Bay; there I forgot that Las Palmas was ugly, a bastard child of Spanish mis-rule and modern commerce, for the curve of the bay and its sands and boulder beach to the eastward were wonderful. For though Confital is but a few steps across the long sand spit to leeward of which the commercial port lies, it might be a thousand miles away as it faces the wind and has its own quiet and its own glory of colour. The sea tumbles in upon a beach of shingle and sand and is for ever in foam, and the colour of it is tropical. Away to the left the hills above Banyodero and Guia are for the most part shadowy with clouds. Often they are hidden, swathed in mist to the breakers at their feet. And yet the sun shines on Confital and both bays, and on the Isleta, which is red and yellow and a fine atmospheric blue away towards Point Confital, where the sea thunders for ever and breaks in high foam like a breaking geyser. On the beach at one’s feet often lie Portuguese men-of-war, thrown up by the sea. They are wonderful purple and blue, and very poisonous to touch, as so many beautiful things of the sea are. One whole day was greatly spoiled to me by handling one of them carelessly. My hands smarted furiously, and when I sucked an aching finger, after washing it in the sea, the poison transferred itself to my tongue and I had hardly voice left to swear with at a wandering band of young beggars from the Puerto. But then neither swearing, nor entreaty, nor indifference will send Spanish beggars away. They are to be borne with like flies, or mosquitoes, or bad weather, and only patience may survive them. But for them and for cruelty to animals Spain and Spain’s dependencies might make a better harvest out of travellers. One may indeed imagine after all that nothing but accident or a sense of desperation might land and keep one at Las Palmas. I would as soon stay there for a long time as I would deliberately get out of a Union Pacific overland train at Laramie Junction and put down my stakes in that dusty and bedevilled sand and alkali hell. And yet there is the climate at Las Palmas. And out of it are the sand-dunes and Confital Bay.